Nicorette maker Kenvue’s Vice President Hannah French has called for a “tobacco and nicotine free generation” in a speech to EU policy makers at the Parliament Magazine’s Healthcare summit.
In a soft “sponsored interview” riddled with misleading statements, French told attendees that she welcomed the Commission’s statements on increasing tax on vaping products: possibly referring to disinformation spread by Health Commissioner Oliver Varheyli that new nicotine products are just as risky as smoking.
Before Kenvue was spun out of Johnson and Johnson, J&J led the charge for vapes to be regulated as medicines – effectively a ban – EU wide. The man leading the charge then, as now, was an executive at Japan Tobacco International for four and a half years before joining Kenvue and the fight against safer nicotine products. It seems that the company – that is in the process of being acquired by Kimberly Clark – will try the same again.
In closing, French told an anecdote about a grandmother who was able to hold her granddaughter now she’d stopped smoking, whom she’d met in a focus group “the other day”.
Apparently this grandmother tried to quit with “alternative products” but ended up “dual using”. Kenvue and French did this sponsored spot at the Health conference last year and we covered it then. Looking back on our notes, we’re pretty sure French told the same story last year.
